Karaoke Rap

by Laurence Gough

  Ozzie said, “Why is it that, in every restaurant in this city, the only light beer you can buy is Coors?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “How come the only light beer you got is Coors?”

  The waitress shrugged. She said, “You don’t like Coors?”

  “No, Coors is fine. Number one.” He poured beer into his glass, dipped his tongue. He rubbed his stomach. “Mmmm, good!”

  “Everything a beer should be, and more,” said Dean.

  Ozzie waggled a finger. “No, I think that’s Budweiser.”

  The waitress had chewed a fragment of plastic off the tip of her pen. She put the fragment in her apron pocket. She said, “Would you like to speak to the manager? I could ...”

  Ozzie cut her off with a terse wave of his hand that made the napkins flutter and tremble. He said, “Gimme a well-done steak, a double order of hash browns, skip the vegetables.”

  “Same for me,” said Dean. He smiled. “Bring us a couple more beers while you’re at it, willya?”

  “Coors Light?”

  “Perfect,” said Ozzie. He reached across the table and jovially thumped Dean on the shoulder. “I was hoping to treat you to a real nice meal, but you get something a whole lot better.”

  “What’re you talking about?”

  “A lesson in life, Dean. Now you understand what the difference is, between them and us. Nothing but money and clothes.”

  “I don’t see your point.”

  Ozzie wiped his face with a paper napkin, looked at the napkin to see how much cleaner he was. Why in hell had he dragged Dean’s stupid ass to an overpriced restaurant full of stiff faces poking out of expensive suits, a place with all the cheery atmosphere of a morgue, with a menu printed in a foreign language? He shifted on the bench seat, trying to make himself comfortable. His body felt as if it were corkscrewing into itself, wound too tight. Maybe he’d wanted to share the same kind of dining experiences that Harold and Melanie had enjoyed. Another nagging question: why had he asked Harold for a light, put himself in a situation where he might be remembered?

  Was the pressure getting to him, was he starting to lose it? Maybe it was a good thing they were going to make the move, do the dirty deed. He had a strong feeling that if he’d waited much longer, he’d find he had waited a bit too long.

  He looked down. The meal lay there in front of him, steaming. His mouth watered.

  Dean’s face was no more than an inch from his plate. His fork rose and fell, rose and fell ...

  Ozzie said, “The point is, I wanted to give you some small idea of what Harold’s gonna do for us. Or, I should say, what his money’s gonna do for us. How our lives are gonna change. For the better.”

  Dean slurped some beer. He nodded. Mouth full, he said, “The world’s gonna be our oyster.”

  “Now you got it!”

  Dean nodded. But the thing of it was, he was a prairie boy, and he didn’t like seafood.

  24

  The ex-Rott-owner’s corpse floated face up in the water. A dozen ghost crabs had hitched a ride. The eyes had gone. The ears were so badly decomposed that the gold earrings had fallen away. The grossly swollen flesh had assumed the colour and rubbery texture of an undercooked poached egg.

  The corpse bobbed along in a light chop, on a course roughly parallel to the North Vancouver waterfront. A roving band of teenagers, believing it was a waterlogged bundle of rags, shot at it with air rifles until it was lost from view.

  Not long afterwards, the swirling outflow of the Capilano River pushed the body away from the shoreline, into deeper and darker waters.

  For several hours, it drifted on the diamond-bright ocean among the flotilla of small craft that sought the river’s dwindling run of coho salmon.

  Those eagle-eyed fisherfolk should have spotted the body.

  Apparently no one did.

  25

  Joan finished the chapter and bent the page and put the book aside and turned out the bedside light. It was 11:59 by the digital clock on the night table way over there on Harold’s side of their king-size bed. She plumped up her pillow and rolled over on her side. The diamond-encrusted Rolex Harold had given her on her fortieth birthday ticked quietly on her wrist.

  The bedroom window was open a crack. She listened to the soft music of the wind moving through the leaves of the pink dogwood, and then her body stiffened as she heard the familiar sound of the Rolls turning into the driveway. She realized that she had been holding her breath in anticipation of Harold’s arrival. She waited for the solid thunk of Harold slamming the Rolls’ door shut, and then the car accelerated away, the muted throb of the exhausts lost out there, somewhere in the night. She was hearing things, letting her imagination run away with her.

  She pressed down on the pillow so she could see the clock.

  12:01.

  But that was impossible, because Harold always got home by midnight and he was never, ever late.

  She watched the numbers turn over until it was 12:15, and then turned the light back on and picked up her book.

  Where was Harold?

  She read for ten minutes and then got out of bed, slipped into her pink-and-white-striped terrycloth bathrobe and went downstairs. The driveway was empty. She unlocked the door that led directly to the garage, switched on the lights. Harold’s BMW and her white Jaguar crouched low and elegant on the spotless concrete, the broad space between the two cars empty as empty can be.

  She went into the living room and poured a half-inch of rye into a lowball glass. She got ice from the refrigerator’s dispenser, jumped as the cubes rattled down the chute.

  She was frightened. But why?

  Because Harold was never, ever late.

  Never!

  She pictured him in the Rolls, driving through the city. Maybe, it sure as hell wouldn’t be the first time, he’d had a little too much wine with dinner. Judgement impaired, he’d miscalculated his speed, run a light.

  She pictured him slouched behind the wheel, half asleep. She saw, or almost saw, she glimpsed, as in a dream, the bulky, hunch-shouldered blur of onrushing metal speeding through the rancid orange glow of the streetlights.

  Harold flinched, threw up his hands.

  Joan pressed the cold lowball glass against her forehead. What if he came home and found her standing there, wide awake, drink in hand. Where would that lead? To a conversation neither of them wanted to endure. She freshened her drink and hurried back upstairs, slipped into the still-warm bed.

  When he turned the corner and drove that last block towards the house he would see the light on in the bedroom window. But she’d hear the car turn into the driveway, and by the time he came upstairs the light would be out and she’d have turned on her side, her back to him, and she’d be sleeping, or at least she’d pretend to be sleeping ...

  She tried to read but the pages kept blurring, the words didn’t seem to make any sense, and it was impossible to concentrate.

  She had a terrible sense of foreboding. Harold was a long way from perfect, but through all the years of his infidelities he had always followed one ironclad rule. He was always home by midnight.

  Always.

  So, where was he?

  Where was Harold?

  Where in heavens name was her husband?

  What had happened to him?

  Where was he?

  *

  Harold was late. He’d eaten too much roast pheasant, drunk too much wine. Melanie had told him to go easy. He’d advised her to relax and enjoy herself, live a little.

  Back at the apartment, she’d gone straight into the kitchen to brew a pot of decaf. Harold, having lived a little too much, had fallen asleep on the sofa. He’d slept until she woke him, at quarter past eleven.

  The rule was, and she knew it all too well, that he had to be out of there no later than eleven-thirty, home by twelve.

  Why hadn’t she wakened him earlier?

  Melanie laughed out loud. One of the things Harold liked about her was the
way she laughed, unrestrained but feminine. But tonight it seemed to him that her laughter had a hint of nastiness to it. He knew from hard-earned experience that when she was in the mood, Melanie could be a certified solid-gold, twenty-four-karat bitch.

  She patted Harold’s knee and reminded him that she was almost out of cigarettes and he’d promised to buy her a pack at the corner store before he went home. She suggested that, unless he intended to break his promise, he’d better get his fuzzy little ass in gear.

  Harold checked the diamond-studded gold Rolex he’d given to himself on Joan’s fortieth. He checked the VCR’S clock. He turned Melanie’s wrist so he could see the face of her Seiko. He leaned back for a view of the kitchen, the clock on the wall above the fridge.

  Melanie said, “Come on, Harold. Up and at ’em. Drive me to the store and drop me off, I’ll walk back to the apartment.”

  “At this time of night?” Harold reluctantly allowed himself to be pulled to his feet.

  Melanie gave him a full-press hug. Harold put his arms around her and hugged her back, wandered his hands over her. She made a kittenish sound, a kind of mewing. Encouraged, he nibbled an earlobe. He said, “I was hoping we could fool around a little ...”

  “So was I,” said Melanie, clearly a little frustrated. She broke free and moved towards the door. “Maybe you should go a little easier on the wine next time, okay?”

  Harold was instantly contrite. “I’m so sorry, I really am.” He stuck his hands in his pants pockets. Melanie gave him a coquettish look.

  “What’re you doing in there, Harold?”

  “Looking for my keys.”

  She held them up, gave them a shake. The sterling-silver Rolls-Royce keyring glittered in the light.

  “Follow me, handsome.”

  Harold sauntered along behind her. She knew him all too well. There was something going on down there. Maybe if he played his cards right ...

  Melanie locked the apartment door behind them. They walked hand in hand along the corridor towards the bank of elevators. Harold pushed the down button, and a few moments later the bronzed elevator doors slid open. He followed her into the elevator, pushed another button. His soft bulk eased her into a corner. He slipped his hands under her jacket. His fingers were full of cashmere, silk, flesh. He was up on the toes of his brown suede Rockports, his breath coming ragged and shallow. Lucky Harold, in Otis heaven.

  The elevator doors slid open. Harold kept at her. The doors rebounded and started to slide shut, inexplicably sprang open again.

  Harold struggled to get his hand under Melanie’s skirt. She tried to push him away. His tongue lapped at her throat. He tasted her perfume.

  Melanie screamed.

  Harold fell back. Her eyes were wide. She wasn’t looking at him. She was staring past him, at something behind him. She looked terrified. She had forgotten he existed.

  His hands fell away from her breasts. He glanced over his shoulder, and gasped in shock and fear. Two men stood in the open elevator doorway. One of the men wore a black T-shirt, the other a pale-blue shirt. Both men wore jeans and black balaclavas and tight black gloves. Both were pointing guns at him. Large pistols, shiny as toys.

  Ozzie said, “What the fuck are you doing here, Melanie?”

  Melanie gaped at him.

  Dean said, “What should we do with her? Should we shoot her?”

  “In the blink of an eye, if she fucks with us.” Ozzie cocked the Ruger’s hammer, reducing the pressure required to pull the trigger from approximately nine to merely two pounds. As he adjusted his grip on his pistol, bolts of light were reflected from the stainless-steel barrel. He said, “Let’s go, kids.”

  Harold shot his cuff. He said, “That’s a Rolex. It cost me ...” Dean slapped Harold’s wrist with the barrel of his pistol. Harold yelped. His face, in Ozzie’s opinion, indicated he believed he’d got exactly what he deserved.

  Dean had parked the rented van directly in front of the Rolls. Everybody climbed inside. Ozzie pointed out a red plastic container of gasoline. He explained that, if Harold or Melanie caused any problems, they’d burn.

  Ozzie tossed Dean fat rolls of duct tape in primary colours bright enough to make a rainbow blush with envy. Red tape for Harold’s mouth, green for Melanie’s. Then Ozzie held his pistol steady while Dean lowered a recycled brown paper Safeway bag over Harold’s head. As Dean eased an identical bag over Melanie, he smiled and apologized for mussing her beautiful hair.

  When he’d finished taping their hands, Dean said, “There we go, that oughtta do it.” He stroked Melanie’s arm. “Comfortable, honey?”

  She made a small snuffling sound that could have meant anything.

  “Good,” said Dean, and clambered into the front passenger seat.

  Ozzie started the engine. He put the van in gear and rolled down his window. As the van crawled past Harold’s Rolls, he fired six times as quickly as he could pull the trigger. The first shot punched a hole in the windshield just above the rim of the steering wheel. The seat jumped as the bullet drilled into the soft leather upholstery. After that, it was all muzzle blasts and smoke, ear-splitting explosions, huge overlapping cobwebs in the Rolls’ windshield.

  Melanie was screaming. So loud. Hadn’t Dean taped her mouth?

  Correction. Dean was yelling, not Melanie. Ozzie’s Ruger ejected to the right. A stream of scorchy-hot brass cartridges had hit Dean in the throat and tumbled down inside his shirt.

  Now Melanie was making noise. Strange murph! sounds that were kind of unsettling. He swung at her with the pistol, missed. The van swerved dangerously. He shouted “Shut up, or you’ll get the next one.”

  Dean said, “Hey, go easy on her. She’s scared, that’s all.” He slapped the dashboard. “We got ’em, Ozzie! We got ’em!”

  *

  Speeding along the treacherous, black and twisty highway to Whistler, the radio playing, tires hissing on black pavement, a calming breeze rushing across his face from the partly open window, Ozzie thought about how easily Harold had allowed himself to be herded out of the elevator and into the van. The look on his face, disappointed but resigned, almost as if he’d been waiting for his cosy little world to come crashing down around him, a couple of hard-asses with guns to take him for a ride.

  It crossed Ozzie’s mind that maybe Harold had problems he didn’t know about. Had Melanie somehow become inconvenient? Was it possible she was pregnant ...?

  What if she were pregnant, blackmailing Harold, and he’d hired some muscle, a couple of frighteners? What if Harold mistakenly believed Ozzie and Dean were working for him?

  Dean said, “What’s so funny?”

  “Why, was I laughing?”

  “Snickering,” said Dean. He lit a cigarette, blew out the match and tossed it on the floor. He gingerly rubbed his neck as he took a hard pull on his cigarette.

  In the cigarette’s soft orange light, Ozzie glimpsed the burn marks left by the spent casings. He said, “How’s the neck?”

  Dean grunted, indicating pain in a manly way.

  Ozzie thought, You ain’t seen nothin’ yet.

  26

  Harold answered on the fourth ring. He told Joan he wasn’t in at the moment, to please wait for the beep and leave a message, and he’d get back to her just as soon as he could.

  It was a little past one in the morning. Joan had waited until then before losing patience and dialling her husband’s private number at his Howe Street office.

  The fact that he wasn’t at his office meant nothing. He’d probably driven straight to his girlfriend’s the moment he hung up on her. She decided to wait another hour, until two a.m., and then dial 911, and report him missing.

  But when two o’clock finally rolled around, calling the police emergency number seemed an overly dramatic gesture.

  She told herself Harold was just fine, that the Rolls would turn into the driveway any moment now ...

  She pictured a dark car running a red light. Sirens and flashing emergency lights. Poo
ls of dark liquid on the road.

  She imagined Harold in bed with his tart, drinking and laughing, having a good time at her expense.

  She caught a glimpse of Harold in a body bag, his arms folded across his torn chest. His eyes shut forever, his heart stopped forever.

  Her 911 call was logged at 2:31 a.m.

  The dispatcher’s voice was calm. “Ambulance, fire or police?”

  Joan launched into a brief history of her marriage to Harold. All those years, and he never came home later than midnight. Had he been involved in an accident?

  “Ma’am, do you have any reason to believe your husband is an accident victim?”

  Joan patiently explained again that Harold never arrived home later than midnight.

  “Did you wish to file a missing-persons report, ma’am? You’ll have to wait seventy-two hours, if you wish to file a report.”

  Joan hung up.

  The telephone rang immediately. It was the 911 dispatcher, calling to determine that Joan had hung up voluntarily and did not require an ambulance, fire or police.

  Joan told her she was just fine, thanks. Her voice dripped with sarcasm as she apologized for any inconvenience she might have caused, said that she was hanging up now, if that was okay with everybody. She slammed the phone into the cradle and went downstairs and looked up “Hospitals” in the Yellow Pages. She tried St. Paul’s and then Vancouver Hospital, University, St. Vincent’s, Children’s, Mount St. Joseph. What if Harold had driven out of the city? She phoned Queens Park, Richmond, Royal Columbian and Surrey Memorial. In half an hour she had tried every hospital in the lower mainland. When she finally hung up the phone, she still had no idea if Harold had been involved in an accident.

  But if he had been in an accident, surely someone would phone her.

  Unless ... What if he’d been seriously injured, or even killed?

  They’d send a policeman around to talk to her, and it would be a police car rather than Harold’s Rolls that would turn into the driveway.

  She turned on the porch light, dressed in loose-fitting grey slacks and a bulky black sweater.